Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Alice Under Control: 1908

New York, 1908. "The end of the rampage -- 'Alice' under control, and thinking it over. Two zookeepers with restrained elephant lying on the ground after running free around the New York Zoological Park (Bronx Zoo)." Gelatin silver print from the William Temple Hornaday papers, Library of Congress. View full size.

This was not Alice's only attempt to escape. In June 1904 she was a resident at the Luna Park amusement, and sneaked out of her shed with two other elephants, taking to the river to swim from Coney Island to Staten Island where the New Dorp police took her into custody. (The other two elephants wandered in a different direction and were soon found).

"Press agent or no press agent, we got him, and we are going to keep him till a bondsman shows up," a police officer said, according to printed accounts of the event.

[The press agent would be Luna Park PR man Fred Thompson, who according to contemporary accounts is alleged to have "hired a furniture van to cart the elephant through Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through downtown Manhattan, and then on the ferry to Staten Island. Once near shore, Alice was released into the water." -Dave]

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.